Since its outset, Isola Art Center’s gamble has been the creation of an open and dynamic experimentation platform, combining international-levelcontemporary art, emerging young art an theoretical research, with the needs and desires of a mixed, workingclass neighborhood’s inhabitants, affecting such neighborhood’s transformation. From 2003 to 2007 IAC converted former industrial building “Stecca degli artigiani” in a Center for art and community life. The exhibition space on the second floor has allowed artists, critics, curators, philosophers and inhabitants in general to create Milan’s most dynamic situation of contemporary artistic research. Throughout the years, works of Italian and international artists specifically conceived for the Stecca, have entered the Center’s ideal “permanent collection”.In April 2007 the city government and real estate multinational
Hines have cleared the Stecca, evicting Isola Art Center and the craftspeople and associations, subsequently proceeding to the demolition of the building. Fortunatly the strong connection of Isola Art Center to the territory has allowed us to survive the eviction and carry on with our activities, using the neighbourhood itself as our acting space. Hosted by other venues, such as associations, shops, public spaces, we have created a field of cooperations eventually engendering new possibilities. The Center’s activities remain strongly linked to the the struggle of the neighborhood for a self governed public space and against the gentrification of the Isola-district.